


The Bluest Sea

by arcanemoody



Category: Gotham (TV), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Bathing/Washing, Drift Compatibility, Drift Sex, First Time Blow Jobs, Frottage, Ghost Drifting, Hand Jobs, Human Experimentation, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Post-Episode: s02e20 Unleashed, Season/Series 02, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:22:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24523777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanemoody/pseuds/arcanemoody
Summary: Gotham fears no murderous beasts crawling out of the sea. Instead, it elects them or puts them in charge of running hospitals. Edward Nygma's attempted escape from the latter has consequences for both him and the friend he's been desperate to find.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma
Comments: 26
Kudos: 63





	1. The Drift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [connerluthorkent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connerluthorkent/gifts), [Esperata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esperata/gifts), [Basilintime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basilintime/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hugo Strange's misuse of invasive technology in the name of science, medical advancement, and tying up loose ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edward's drift memories and internal dialogue are in _italics_.  
> Oswald's drift memories and internal dialogue are in **bold**.  
> Their synchronized thoughts post-drift and while ghost drifting are in _**both**_.

Gotham is on the east coast -- the wrong side of the country for the apocalyptic war that has usurped all major conflicts in the last few years. 

Ed remembers watching the footage three days into the attack in San Francisco, knowing it was real and not an illusion or a product of his own fractured mind. He’d been fascinated enough to briefly consider volunteering for a research position. The urge died quickly, as seeking a pathology role within the burgeoning “kaiju science” field would have involved background checks and juvenile records being unsealed by the order of a significantly larger authority than the Gotham City Police Department. 

Gotham itself had always seemed immune to the concept of worldwide threats. Or rather, habitually, the terror wrapped up in the minutiae of their daily lives took precedent. Gothamites were more worried about making a wrong turn down a street they wouldn‘t make it home from. With highly individualized impending destruction perpetually on the horizon, little things like ocean portals to other dimensions were barely a blip on the radar. Human beings desensitized easily by perpetual catastrophe -- both a thousand miles away and just around the block.

The city fears no murderous beasts crawling out of the sea. Instead, it elects them or puts them in charge of running hospitals. 

Edward Nygma is a cop killer with a genius-level IQ, so he isn’t particularly surprised to end up slated on Hugo Strange’s inventory of lab rats. His failed escape through the roof hatch appears to have sealed his fate. 

His brain fires through several impulses at once: self-censure for getting lost. Self-censure for getting _caught_ . Several mental gymnastics on how he might spin this to his advantage. His arms hurt, no doubt bruised by the guards’ rough handling. He hopes Selina finds her friend. He hopes the girl she knew isn’t among the dead-alive he found in the basement. He really, _really_ hopes the basement isn’t where he’s headed…

Hope is, as ever, a useless emotion.

Strange and Peabody are already waiting for him. Tying up loose ends.

The lab space is tiny, filthy, with some… startling and familiar equipment mounted in the center of the floor. 

He suspects the PONS Unit is a hodgepodge of Strange’s own creation, a bastardization of what they put in the jaegers, made from black market parts and sloppy guesswork. The helmets resemble a squid-like clamp more than the futuristic tech that graced the cover of _Scientific American_ years ago. There is no mechanism, no conduit for the “subjects” to pour their combined intellects and impulses towards through their connected limbic systems. There’s just the monitor and the drift technology -- the drift itself is the “goal.” Though how the Arkham staff knows when two patients are able to maintain a stable neural handshake without the additional apparatus is a mystery. Judging by the blood they haven’t bothered to scrub from the chair’s headrest, they probably only know what a _failed_ drift looks like.

Still, the chair is little more than a curiosity as the guards finally drop his arms, shoving him inside. The room and his potentially being strapped into said chair is a curiosity. 

Until he spots the inmate Strange has selected to be his “partner” in this little experiment. 

“Mr. Penguin?”

The mentor and friend he‘d last seen slouched and defeated in the GCPD lock-up; dressed in his old wool coat and knit cap. Ed had looked for him for weeks after his arrival in Arkham -- scanning documents for possible transfer, or hospitalization. He had even tried to gain entry to the hospital after overhearing Gordon’s off-hand remark about conversing with Oswald in the yard. All to no avail. The sting of that loss had only fueled his later actions.

His appearance here, already bound to the chair on the right, brings a fresh wave of nausea. His stomach roils so hard, his knees threaten to buckle.

“Ed?” Oswald breathes, pale eyes wide in alarm. “ _Oh no_ …”

“Interesting,” Strange says. “The subjects have a prior association. Ms. Peabody, prep Mr. Nygma, please.”

Fight or flight mode kicks in. Oswald kicks against his restraints, spitting expletives while Ed sinks his teeth into the shoulder of one captor before the other one delivers a blow to the side of his head. His glasses skitter to the floor. It’s disorienting just long enough to strap his arms and legs to the chair and fit the over-large head piece to his skull. 

“Trial number 3-6-A,” Strange spoke aloud, jotting notes down on a clipboard. “Subjects have been incarcerated less than twelve months. Subject A, Patient B-113 has exhibited resistance to extended isolation, de-patterning, and immersion therapy via the Crane formula—“

“Strange! You won’t leave here alive if you hurt him!“

“Subject B, Patient D-711 has refused medication and demonstrated significant flight risk—“

Ed pushes against the straps.

“Commencing neural handshake in 5, 4, 3, 2--”

 _  
\--  
  
  
Blue. Everything is blue. Kinetic. Always in motion. The blue of the seaside, _ **the sky at the pier…**

**„Miért itatod az egereket!“**

**He wipes his face messily on the back of his hand.**

**“I’m not crying, Mama.”**

_There are no tears. Tears are something he‘s already beyond at age 5. He holds his bloody nose closed as he brushes wood chips off of his ruined book._

**The library is quiet as he turns away from the row of science texts towards his actual goal. The book is under his coat as soon as he spots it and he moves carefully out the front door. He‘s at home and under the silk throw on the couch when he risks a glimpse at his quarry.** **The male figure on the front cover is shirtless, slick curls parted on the side with Old World elegance, his heart skips a beat…**

_He wants to learn to sew. If his clothes are going to get torn or dirty or end up on the front lawn every time there’s a fight, he should learn how to fix them himself. The SINGER machine is manual -- no need for electrical power -- and the drawers in the table are full of machine thread and dog-eared patterns. Ed stares at an open page for a long time -- a tall man and petite woman with a ponytail, both stripped down to their “intimates” -- his stomach clenching..._

**“Help me! Please!”**

_“Of course! Just… give me a second.” He strips off his work gloves so that he can tear at the linen of the tiny kingpin’s shirt, just above the gunshot wound that had torn through his shoulder "How did you get out here?"…_

**“Please give the task of killing me to Jim Gordon… He’s an honest man.”** ****

_“We were friends.” Gordon’s face is hateful. It makes it easy to point a gun at him in the snow-covered woods. That face, handsome and affable, no longer disbelieving but still pole-axed somewhere inside, in a way that Ed can’t reach because he doesn’t understand him; has never fully grasped the less obvious emotions that connect people, that tie one man’s fate to another’s even in the midst of catastrophe. Is it the loss of Ed’s admiration he resents? The loss of a subordinate? Not an equal, certainly. A pet. The betrayal of a dog snapping at his master’s hand._ _  
  
__"Were we, Jim? Or did you just pity me?” He already knows the answer…_

**Jim Gordon, everyone’s heroic golden boy. Who left a war in the desert to fight a war in the Pacific only to come fight on the homefront when things didn’t work out at Kodiak Island. ‘Not conducive to drifting’ according to the rumors. The only son of a wealthy district attorney apparently never learned to share with others. Who could have ever guessed?**

**“What’s it like to walk on water, Detective? Oh, I’m sorry — I guess you’ll never know.” It’s a cheap shot but Oswald takes it anyway...**

_The snow melts away, bleeding into the gray concrete and steel of Edward's interrogation at the GCPD. Harvey Bullock is the one in the room, but he’s just a proxy -- an oversized gnat -- and Ed swats him away to speak directly to Gordon, concealed behind the two-way mirror. “You thought your little ‘gentleman's agreement’ would hold up? While your indiscretion got to disappear for a crime you committed. No wonder you were such a bad soldier, friend...”_

**His new friend is strange, but in a way Oswald feels himself getting used to quickly: warm; oddly unfamiliar; so very welcome after everything he’s been through. He makes dinner on the eighth day, when the GCPD keeps Edward out late on a case. He can’t cook as well as his benefactor so he makes sandwiches and brews a pot of mint tea from the looseleaf tin on the lowest shelf, carrying both to the makeshift sofa. Ed’s smile is broad and boyish and the urge to pet his friend's hair is strong, the way his mother had always petted his hair after a hard day...**

**Oswald’s in the bath at home, epsom salts, a scattering of dried lavender and chamomile in the water. To help him sleep later. The sculpted porcelain is cool on his cheek as Mom putters about in the background somewhere, telling him about her day...**

_The water is murky and smells like pennies. The victim’s eyes are shut, mouth slack as she leans her face on the edge of the tub. The angle of the cuts suspiciously deep and there’s a lack of hesitation marks one would expect to see in most suicides. (“Nygma! Wait for the M.E. before you go poking around!”) He moves to stand and slips on the bathroom tile, covered with the same red water…_  
_  
_ _His mother’s at the bottom of the stairs, crawling along the carpet, lip bleeding and breathing ragged. Blue eyes flash a warning at him just before his father barrels down the stairs after her._ _  
_ _  
_ _“Eddie… call the police.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“BOY GET BACK HERE...!”_

He lingers too long, heart hammering in his abruptly smaller chest, chases the RABIT just enough. Enough that he briefly feels the room jar back into focus before sliding back into blue ether. 

The waters recede and he finds himself in the block of an abandoned warehouse, the smell of polluted water and factory machinery left to rust. Ed knows immediately that this is not his memory, not his fight. 

And there _is_ a fight going on -- even if the participants can’t see him.

 **“Kill me if you must, but let her go!”**

The woman in the cell shakes her head, ash blonde and gray hair flying, face even more grim than her captors. Ed recognizes the familiar piercing eyes and drawn features as well as the setting with reflexive horror: Oswald’s mother. The night she was killed.

“Chasing the rabbit” was actually “chasing the RABIT.” Ed had been so pleased the first time he recognized the pun… 

Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers. Jaeger Pilots were discouraged from meditating on a single memory in the drift, lest an emotional spiral cause them and/or their partner to get trapped and neglect the reality of the 320 tonnes of bio-weapons strapped to their vehicle’s arms. Among the more individual dangers were panic attacks, cerebral hemorrhage, respiratory failure.

Neither he nor Oswald are strapped to anything larger than the headpiece, but if they die in those chairs, no one will ever know what happened to them.

“Mr. Penguin?”

It’s his fault -- his fault. He chased the RABIT and now they’re stuck. Strange had put him on the left. The pilots on the left controlled the left hemisphere of the jaeger’s commands and were, statistically, the more subordinate...If anything, _Penguin’s_ the one who’s supposed to be able to save him. 

But the friend he knows replays his role, embracing his mother, sobbing as Tabitha Galavan’s knife plunges into her back. 

“Mr. Penguin!”

Removing Butch and the Galavans from the scene is like erasing NPCs in a game he’s never played. The best he can do is ignore them and hope they remain paused in place or glitch out before they accidentally succeed in restarting his friend’s nightmare.

“Mr. Penguin?” Ed pleads, finds himself kneeling next to his friend. “Oswald, I _know_... I know you miss her. I know you feel like you failed her but we cannot stay here.”

“Mom… no, mom please…come back...“

“Oswald. Look at me.“

“...please…“

Instinctively, Ed goes deeper, reaching into the darkest well of his mind and retrieving something even he wasn't aware of, not consciously. Not him, not even the _other_ him ...

“From the moment I saw you, all I wanted was for you to _look at me_.”

_He sees that moment now, overlaid with amber instead of blues: the commotion and abrupt silence as his quarreling co-workers froze mid-rabble, fear coating the air. Because eye contact was painful, he had been the last to turn, queueing off the path of Jim‘s gaze…_

**“I am Oswald Cobblepot**.“

 **The weight of being seen is delicious. The fear and confusion... more so.** **_They will keep it. Nurture it as a child would a beloved pet and watch it grow, ascend to its full potential._ ** **This first burst will suffice; he draws it out as he descends the few steps to the main floor.**

 **_“_ ** **Interrogation?“ he asks.**

**The young man in the gray lab coat startles, features smoothing out, lips tilted almost mirroring his own expression. He points awkwardly towards the east hallway.**

**“Thank you.“ he smiles… Did he smile then?** **_Did we?_ **

**The man in the lab coat answers for him.**

**_“I wanted you to smile at me… You were stunning. You stunned everyone, made them all look like idiots. I didn’t even know why but I needed it, I still do.“_ **

**_The blue hits them both with a parting scream..._ **

\--

Pulling out of the drift is laborious. Pulling the _both_ of them out is agony.

Through the haze, Ed’s wrist restraints feel like paper. He breaks them easily, tearing more viciously than he feels. He watches from a distance as the attending orderly’s face cracks to the side at a 90 degree angle. His knuckles wrist and metacarpal joints sting for a second, before the adrenaline kicks in and drift fog swamps his senses. No one else tries to stop him as he moves to Oswald's side, tearing at the straps around his wrists and ankles, lifting the PONS from his friend’s head. Long fingers stroke his friend’s closed eyes, cradles his jaw.

“Drágám, kérlek…?”

Oswald wakes up with a gasp that sounds like drowning, then goes immediately still. Wild blue-green eyes look up at him and the wave of emotion and subsequent feedback is almost too much, would have been too much when he was alone in the world. 

But he's not alone now and he never will be again.  
****

**Ed?**

_It’s me._

He’s read dozens of articles on the post-drift reactions of jaeger pilots, including all of the reports on Captain Casey’s death (some of which had given him nightmares about limbic seizures). Dr. Lightcap’s dissertation on the short-term serotonin uptick following prolonged drifts had been the most enlightening— almost more for the fact that it was published after she’d retired and disappeared from the lecture circuit. The long-term neurological implications are still a mystery. Anything else is projecting wildly divergent theories for a technology that’s been in use for less than a decade and will take at least two more to monitor the full impact on its users (if the world has that much time left). 

The short-term impact however… 

Ed takes a shaky breath, chest tight; frigid air burning his lungs even as his stomach floods with warmth. 

It’s overwhelming. 

Physical contact is paramount, skin to skin contact is earth-shattering. Natural in that being separate is suddenly unnatural and _right_ in that not touching is now _wrong_. He recognizes depersonalization— knows it intimately. He’s both in his body and not in his body, because his body is suddenly bigger than it was, more home and hearth now than a fractured pit of horrors. He lays his cheek on Oswald‘s, palms framing his neck, heaving breaths ruffling his hair...

 **Ed.**

_It’s me._

**_I’m here._ **

\--

They walk into the same cell, arm in arm, slow, measured steps to account for Oswald’s disability and the blood seeping through the leg of Ed’s uniform pants. Strange waves off the remaining orderlies that try to stop them, no doubt determined to observe the effects. There are definitely cameras in this containment block (they’ll need to locate and disable those later).

There’s a clank of a door behind them as they crawl onto the single, narrow mattress, breathing in tandem, arms overlapping. Oswald's breath is on his sternum and Edward's nose in his hair, grit and sebum and minute citrus notes of long-degraded pomade. Or perhaps it’s a feedback loop from the drift, fooling his senses. The air feels cool down here, still and quiet with a perpetual humming under their feet. 

**Edward?**  
  
Oswald's lips haven't moved since he woke up in the chair. Ed sucks his bottom lip between both of his just to be sure. Dizziness invades every cell in his body, particularly as their mouths part and reconnect, breathing raggedly. Sharing oxygen as they now share neurotransmitters, an electric exchange.

**Edward. How?**

_They told me you gave me up. They trapped me. They caught me. I’m sorry. I was so twisted up, I couldn’t think straight… I forgot everything you taught me._

There’s a taste of copper and salt, chapped and cracked lips split open. His, theirs... who can tell when it's all theirs. Every time he opens his eyes, he sees something different: Oswald’s tousled hair, the bruises on his neck and collarbone, blood pouring from his own nose, from Oswald’s, burns on the nape of his neck from the contact points on the drift helmet. 

They don’t get very far -- even by the most generous definitions: clothes partially unbuttoned, limited skin to skin contact, breathing as one. When one of them bumps their elbow, the other one hisses. When one shivers, they both bury themselves under the thin blankets piled at the bottom of their mattress. Phantom pain, phantom cold, phantoms made real.

Ed can't get close enough. He feels like he’s back in the closet on the second floor of Waterbury Lane, throwing himself against plywood, screaming in the dark before he learned to pick the lock on his cage, to sit back passively, patiently, and devise an end run around his fate. The rhythm of futile thrashing was similar and recalling it touches off an image of swingset on a playground he doesn’t recognize. Fear transmuted into joy and wonder.

 _Come on… come on come on_.

Oswald‘s hand grips his waist, slides down to guide his hip. Short panting breaths, coming faster and faster as their hips settle into an escalating friction, piercing eyes fixed on his.

 **Please…please Ed, please...** **_please_ ** **.**

The shudder that runs through both of their bodies is circular and dizzying, a closed circuit.

\--  
  
Indian Hill doesn’t have windows. It does not have showers or communal meals. It does not have a sense of linear time. The inmates that aren’t in cryo-pods are comatose on gurneys, fed through IV lines and bathed by nurses with sponge buckets. 

At least, until this past week, when several of Strange’s best and brightest awoke to new lives in a new world.

The hallway remains dark, apart from the times when an orderly does a sweep with food trays or Strange’s willful lab assistant pops by to survey the “exhibits.” The motion sensor on the floor activates the fluorescent overhead lights, throwing shadows and too brief flashes of light into each cell.

Ed contents himself with watching the ceiling in the dark. He hums a familiar tune in time with his partner’s pulse, occasionally purring as short fingers stroke through his hair.

He closes his eyes and they’re back in the woods. Daylight this time. The mist of an early spring morning, sun rising in the distance.

**Ed?**

Oswald’s wearing his purple panel coat, the green gloves he borrowed months ago. Standing upright in the clearing, surrounded by brambles, damp grass, the soil of a freshly dug hole big enough for a trunk...  
****

**Edward.**

_Oswald._  
****

He reaches for him and they're back in his apartment, green neon flashing intemittently through the windows.

 **We have to get out of here.** **_  
_ **

Their lips still taste like salt and copper (carnage, the rust of defunct machinery, monstrous beasts coming out of the sea...). When Ed opens his eyes, he can just make out both of their faces streaked with blood in the darkness of their cell.

_We need a plan._


	2. Unleashed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to go.

The “plan” turns out to be made for them when Gordon infiltrates (and, inadvertently, liberates) the facility.

Mayor Galavan, it seems, is still alive. 

Alive, freshly escaped from one of Strange’s pods, and wreaking havoc on the city, as destructive as a kaiju of any category. This last bit of news reaches them through the whispered gossip of the staff as they dispense meds and food trays at a glacial pace. The fury Oswald tastes sticks to the back of Edward’s throat and the grip on his partner’s fingers leaves half-moons of pink, then red and weeping in the back of his hand. His fingers loosen only when Ed leans in to rest his cheek against the shorter man’s hair, nuzzling lightly.

 _I know. I know, Oswald_ . **_It hurts…_ **

And suddenly, the puzzle of escape is solved for them. Because even resurrected and delusional, Galavan is still set on killing Bruce Wayne, who is currently trapped in a lab in Arkham’s east wing. (The boy who knew too much, undone by new Gotham.)

Strange summons one of them and gets both. 

“Only Mr. Nygma is required.”

An orderly reaches for Oswald’s arm and quickly loses two fingers with an audible _crack_. Strange barely quirks an eyebrow and Ed snarls in his face.

“...interesting. Very well then.”

The elevator screeches to life as they ascend to the main floor, surrounded by Strange and his battery of “security” personnel. Both of them keep their eyes forward, lips still as the connection flows between them.

**We’re leaving.**

_Agreed. How?_

**Two left turns at the end of this hallway. He’s taking us to the crow’s nest above the lab. Keep your eye on the Wayne boy. He’s bait.**

Strange takes them left and Oswald goes right. Ed bites his tongue to keep from crying when his partner's fingers leave him, somewhat mollified by the adrenaline spike followed by the wet thunk of an orderly's head against the wall.

\--

Ed loves costumes and Strange, damn him, seems to know. He’d been so careful to betray nothing in their individual sessions since his arrival (and, apparently, hadn’t needed to say anything at all).

He gets a first aid kit and change of clothes (brown shirt, black tie with a green shot he finds pleasing). He dons the latter before tearing through the former: ethyl alcohol for his hands, towelettes with aloe to mop his face and scrub his hair, tiny bottle of mouthwash. One layer of dirt gone, he _almost_ feels good enough to perform his role. 

If he’s not feeling 100 percent, well, neither are his prisoners (the fact that Lucius Fox keeps entangling himself in Gordon’s vendettas is almost unseemly). He pours sadistic panache into his lab coated master of ceremonies -- a reversal of the radio quizzes he so loved not so long ago.

“Who. Runs. Wayne Enterprises?”

For the first time, punishing wrong answers is almost as fun as hearing the right answer. 

Ed doesn’t get to enjoy his performance for very long. He’s rubbing defeat (and aerated sleeping agent) into his adversaries’ faces when the outer door to the lab explodes. 

A man in leather armor storms in, wielding a broadsword. 

“The son of Gotham must--”

Ed laughs uproariously (an unfamiliar cackling reverberating through the PA system) as Oswald appears from the entrance created by the rubble. He drives a medical tray into Galavan’s chest, followed by a knife to his spine, another to his throat...a gallon of flexible collodion poured over his paralyzed body…

**Leave the room, Ed.**

_Okie-dokie._

He doesn’t look back when the lab explodes into an inferno. He can taste the smoke and gas residue. A fleeting part of his brain recognizes Fox and the boy in his periphery, but Oswald’s hand is already back in his; maniacal, triumphant laughter caressing his brain.

\--

Not touching is now unnatural. Skin to skin amplifies the cycle of catharsis, relief, arousal. The latter of which pulses through him as they button Oswald into non-burned civilian clothing, gauze for his nosebleed (and Ed’s nosebleed), Oswald’s hands in his pockets as he pants against his neck. Everything is made more intense by the renewed synchronicity.

**_Yes... Yes... Come on, come on…_ **

Underneath it all, there‘s the giddiness of a freedom that’s so near and yet could slip out from under them in the blink of an eye. 

Never mind the chemical fire below the crow’s nest -- there’s a bomb below the asylum, on a sub- _sub_ -basement floor not even Ed was able to find. The security klaxon signalling a mandatory lockdown is roundly ignored. The staff are running, including the muscle heads that pass for security personnel. Strange is running. The rest of Indian Hill’s menagerie of torture victims are already out and making their own escape. There’s no one left to escort them back, no one left to oversee.

They turn as one, move as one. But when Jim Gordon and Lucius Fox weave into view, Ed faces them head on alone, nerves alight, shadows scattering at the edges of his mind like raven's wings. 

_Oswald?_

**I’m here. Play along. Left coat pocket if you need it.**

And so, Ed faces them alone, is grabbed and forcefully escorted down the hallway _alone_ (or so it appears).

“Can you open the door?!”

**_I can._ **

The words aren’t spoken out loud. Instead, his eyes track the path of Jim’s expressions and gestures. He locates the lock and strips the wires to open the panel, swallows the pit of dread that opens in his stomach at the sound of the doors opening, running converse to the elation of a correct response in his head. 

**_Such a brilliant boy... Where are you?... Not far. Struggle a bit when he grabs you -- he needs to believe it...Believe what?_ **

Ed does struggle, pulling against the hold on his arm, digging his heels into polished tile. All of the behaviors he never would have dared at home with Malcolm. And when Jim tries to throw him into a nearby cell, his drift partner is already there, waiting for them. 

The sight of Oswald -- pupils dilated, thin-lipped and cold, then sporting an uncanny, too large smile -- that’s enough to make Jim freeze. Stunned long enough that the initial imperative is forgotten and Ed feels the death grip on his arm fall away. 

There's a pregnant pause -- it opens up a gulf to let another memory through...

**_The river is, mysteriously, less dark at night, with the lights from the skyline bouncing off the polluted water. The blast of the headlights nearby makes the sharp edge of the sand and silt line look like glass. No high tide on this part of the shoreline, so the body will be found fairly quickly. Message sent._** **_  
_ **

**_"Take me home, Jim," he says, firm and officious even with labored breathing._ **

**_Gordon’s eyes widen slightly (always so surprised)._ ** **_  
_ **

**_"To Ed's? He's already been aiding and abetting you for god knows how long. Don't make him an accessory after the fact."_ ** **_  
_ **

**_"After the fact of what? It was your weapon, detective." His service revolver, now at the bottom of the harbor; to be reported 'stolen' and, worst case scenario, plucked from the beach at low tide by an enterprising passerby. With any luck, their... 'agreement' would hold and the case would be closed by then._ ** **_  
_ **

**_"And that's your umbrella shoved down Galavan’s throat... You involved Lee."_ ** **_  
_ **

**_"Ed involved Lee. As his conscience rightly dictated -- you lied to her."_ ** **_  
_ **

**_"You're trying to claim the moral high ground here?!"_ ** **_  
_ **

**_"It's already mine. Galavan was never going to stop. Not with me, not with the Wayne boy, and definitely not with you. Take. Me. Home. And give me a 24-hour head start... You owe me that."_ ** **_  
_ **

**_His voice breaks on the last syllable, melancholy. Mourning. While Jim Gordon just stares straight ahead, stoic and silently judging. Judging Oswald, Ed, Lee... never himself…_ **

How this man ever thought he would be fit to pilot a jaeger, Ed has no idea. The leaders of the most resource-rich nations in the world had certainly done their citizens a vital service when they kicked him out.

“Oswald—”

Jim is not allowed to talk to him. _Unfit. Hateful._ He can talk to the stun gun in Ed‘s left pocket. Followed by the door frame. He slams his former friend’s face into it twice more before he feels a delicate hand on his wrist.

 **_Time to go._ ** **_  
_ **

—

The sea of red and blue lights keeps them from walking out the front door. The escape route the Indian Hill group took appears to be closing quickly, swamped by a second wave of GCPD who chase after them at full speed and don’t have a prayer of catching up. The staff vehicles are in an above ground lot. Ed thanks the municipal planners that designed the district and the hospital with a secluded exterior entrance that bypasses the bridge entirely. 

Hotwiring a vehicle is not a skill he came into Arkham with, but he’s definitely leaving with it.

**_This takes a longer time than I remember...One of us has larger hands. With less nimble fingers._ **

“Right…” Oswald says, startled enough to speak aloud, just as the engine hums to life. He’s still blushing when they’re more than a mile out from the Arkham district, the wail of sirens disappearing into the distance behind them. 

Ed knows where they’re going, and Oswald doesn’t blink as the familiar streets pass by.

They’re flying under the radar with how calm they both are on the surface, obeying all speed limits and traffic laws. Just two people out for a drive on the eve of another city-wide crisis. Business as usual. It feels like there’s nothing to say, and so he doesn’t object when his partner fiddles with the radio, scrolling through several emergency messages, law enforcement warnings and static, before settling on the first station that’s still broadcasting music. 

Chet Baker’s quiet piano and soothing tenor is oddly calming. Though not as much as the sharp elbow that settles in the flesh of Ed’s right arm and the fingers that remain closed around his wrist.

\--

The safe house has no doubt been picked clean during the months Oswald was in Arkham. But the bodega downstairs is still well-stocked and management conveniently left the front door open when they fled whatever chaos arrived in the Narrows after Galavan’s assault on the city. They take their pick of provisions from the shelves and pocket the remaining cash from the till. Mutual instincts lead them through the back employee exit and up the secret staircase.

Lock-picking is a mutual skill, pre-drift. Ed smiles as the door swings inward and the shorter man gestures for him to step inside first…

The hidden flat is small, but beautiful. Covered with expensive wallpaper and paint that has yet to peel; deep rich reds and accents of burnished gold. The sheets in the linen closet are in vacuum-packed plastic bags, protected from dust mites and other dangers for the residents with long gaps of occupancy. Red as the walls; they smell of washing powder as they shake them out, preparing the bed and crawling under the covers in tandem.

**_This was Fish’s place...I know._ **

Ed smiles.

A place not even her patron had known about, but Ed knows, can feel her here as easily as Oswald. Just as he knows his bedmate briefly worked as an overnight clerk downstairs when he was 19. His tenure cut short by an armed robbery, thwarted with the help of an elegant and thoughtful customer who walked him upstairs afterward to bandage scraped knuckles and splint his broken finger while her pet detectives scrubbed the mess from the walls and floor. Every memory of his mentor is haloed in gold, touched by grace. Different from Gertrud or Ed’s own mother: a love born in worship and a hate seeded in ambition and betrayal. Each at war with the other, never settled. Ed and the other him could teach him a thing or two about that…

Oswald laughs out loud. He laughs out loud, dizzy astonishment and relief.

**_Should we leave the key under the welcome mat?_ **

Oswald’s former mentor had been among the dead-alive at Indian Hill. The memory of that first horror is now Oswald’s, too…

**_She won’t come here. She’s not mad enough to come here… of course we all just escaped from a madhouse… then again the whole city’s a madhouse…when has it ever not been?_ **

Ed trembles as Oswald’s teeth graze his ear then his jaw, deft fingers moving to loosen the knot on his tie, while Ed’s own hands scramble under the blankets to pull at his t-shirt and briefs. There's a rip in the distance as he tears both away. He slips the buttons free on his own dress shirt, wrenches it loose and kicks the trousers away. Oswald pins him, envelopes him, warmth washing through every cell in his body...

**_She’d better not come here... there’s not nearly enough beds and I don’t share...Yes, the bones of the dead girlfriend made that abundantly clear...And Jim Gordon's prison blues..._ **

The abrupt sting to his backside is both an admonishment and a thrill. 

Sore subject, apparently, in bed and out of it. One more thing that’s theirs. 

**_Ours… Mine._ **

Gravity takes him down with a squeak of an unused box spring. Gravity, plus the wiry energy of his drift partner.

Ed stares at the sculpted ceiling, at the dark hair across his lap, shadows cast by burgundy linens and a flash of sodium yellow from a sputtering street lamp. ‘Bites at lips that taste more like mint and aloe now, though still underscored with the coppery notes of their blood... 

The culmination of so much sensory input is dizzying: copper and salt, alcohol and combustion, stale air and refrigerator freon from downstairs, nerve endings set alight… it builds out and collapses in, turns black as they each shut their eyes against their shared climax.

**_Ours...ours… mine, mine..._ **

_Yours._


	3. Repose, Regroup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

Ed never dreams in color, but this is more than a dream.

The sky is blue above him, awash with the gold of sunrise, the city skyline cutting through in sharp angles upward and outward. He watches the water at the pier, sitting on the warped wood of the dock’s edge. Watches the rippling of the harbor which, somehow, is as blue as the Atlantic ocean. A beautiful sea free of devils and demons to fight...

And then even the water itself changes with a hum of television static and a long-forgotten news feed. 

He feels the world turning, oceans rising, breathing in and out with the impending battle. The water is as alive as the kaiju are alive. As the jaegers mimic life with the help of the rangers driving their movements.The sun bounces off a familiar visor, dome-shaped armor plating mimicking shoulders, tethered to two helicopters.

Brawler Yukon, the most famous of the Mark I’s apart from Cherno Alpha. Titanium plating, sabre blades and deep strike cutters designed to slice through kaiju scales, potentially unleashing enough toxic blood to decimate a city. Lucky for the city of Vancouver, it’s going to destroy Karloff on the water, miles away from landfall. The victory is notable in their history for the surge in optimism that spreads across the world: humanity, united, ready to fight. No doubt, Jim Gordon and many other aspiring pilots remember this as the turning point in their way of thinking.

Ed remembers it as a turning point for science, for engineering, for Lightcap and D’Onofrio. The first drift, born of necessity and love to the point of invention. Evidence that the human mind can do incredible things when pressed to its limit...

**It’s beautiful.**

Oswald is next to him on the dock, fingers already twined with his. 

**How is the water so blue?**

_It’s the Pacific Ocean._

The tethers on the helicopters snap and Brawler Yukon hits the water, marching forward.

**I’ve never seen it up close.**

_Me neither. Not today or any other day. I was in a cafe watching the news with everyone else. The battle was relatively short. But the retrieval itself went on for so long, it changed weather formations, sending dust storms through the West coast and a torrent of rain across the Northeast._

He looks down at their joined hands and sees a third set of well-manicured fingers blotting the back of split and gashed knuckles with gauze. He blinks against the scent of rain and blood... 

**_“While I appreciate your reticence, son,” Fish says, a trace of warmth beneath iron and steel. “If you could do me this one, small courtesy…”_ **

**_He swallows around the anxious lump in his throat. It had been a show of trust: her bringing him up here. Into an inner sanctum privy to no one else. And then there was the gun she’d used to blow apart his assailant’s skull. It’s on the side table, not far away..._ **

**_He swallows thickly. “My name is Oswald.”_ **

**_Fish nods, eyes soft. “Thank you for protecting me down there, Oswald. May I walk you home?”_ **

**_It’s still raining as they make their way downstairs, past the police tape and out the front door. When they hit the sidewalk, Oswald opens his umbrella and holds it aloft to cover his benefactor without thinking._ **

**_Of course that’s not the only moment that makes Fish take him on. It’s the umbrella and his fist down that robber’s throat. It’s the studio flat plastered with his mother’s antiques and the standing screen that separates the bath from the rest of the apartment during the day and Oswald’s cot at night… The modest magpie’s nest he calls 'home'..._ **

The water churns and a great roar cuts through the air. Karloff, in his otherworldly glory.

They watch the majestic destruction, in awe, and familiarity in spite of neither of them having seen a kaiju or a Jaeger up close. Ed has the memories of countless reports and the images from the Lima exhibit that had made it to the Gotham museum two years earlier. No real specimens, but the detail of the 1:4-sized replicas had been astounding nonetheless.

He leans his head down, the crown resting against soft dark hair, and they’re suddenly back at his loft at 805 Grundy. Oswald smells like gasoline and gunpowder and he looks like gold. Ed surges forward, touching the way he’d wanted to touch in that moment and never even knew it. He smooths the furred lapels down, pats down his friend’s cowlick, tries to control the hitch in his breath as Oswald covers his wrist, pressing a kiss to the inside of his palm.

_**“You can stay here. You can’t go out there -- it’s not safe! Gordon won’t keep his word. You know that... I wanted you to stay with me… I wanted to stay with you, too. Looks like we both got our wish…”** _

\--

He wakes up slowly, feeling for his glasses which have disappeared into the bedsheets. Sore. Sore from where Jim Gordon grabbed him, sore from where…

Ed smiles as he replaces his glasses, turning his head on the pillow.

Oswald is curled up next to him on the mattress, pale against red and cream silk, the depth of his sleep augmenting Ed’s fatigue and making everything soft around the edges. His legs are still shaking when he stands up, nearly tripping over their bodega haul, hastily scattered across the floor. The contents are a perfect fantasia of their combined priorities: cash from the till, bottled water, peanut butter, six boxes of tea. He plucks a bag of onion crisps from the pile, tearing into them as he explores the rest of the apartment.

Fish Mooney had clearly picked the modest location for its camouflage, but the furnishings reflect her opulent tastes. Beyond the bed, there‘s a plush (if small) sitting area, a well stocked kitchenette and, finally, a bathroom outfitted with a large, freestanding tub. Ed feels his entire body shudder as he takes it in. Months in Arkham had made him want to scratch his skin off under the brief, freezing intervals he got under a communal spray. Four days in Indian Hill, without a shower or even a sink to wash his hands and face, he’d barely thought of it. 

He’s never taken much time in the bathroom before, but the tub calls to him and he fiddles with the taps, climbing in as the pipes creak and hot water comes pouring out. He reaches for bath salts, Rose oil soap, eau de toilette, a marbled shampoo bar that smells like myrrh and citrus. Showering was perfunctory. He doesn’t particularly like being alone with his own naked body. There’s an ease to this kind of relaxation he‘s never had before.The fear he’d always felt — a kind of learned tension, retained over decades, is missing.

He lingers in the tub, rests his face against the cool porcelain edge as his heart rate picks up and he can feel the rest of him arise in the next room. He closes his eyes dreamily, consciousness stirring just a room away.

Oswald appears in the doorway a few minutes later, wrapped in a raw silk dressing gown in a deep claret.

Ed sits up straight, smiles at the piercing, sea glass eyes on his bare skin. 

He had stayed partially in front of others dressed always, even the one night he’d had with Ms. Kringle. But he feels remarkably unselfconscious as Oswald’s eyes take in his nude body, something that would have mortified him before. Not the nudity itself so much as the scars that criss-cross two-thirds of his upper torso: appendix, compound fracture, bullet graze, multiple lacerations. The largest one by far is from a gash sustained from a curved belt buckle (the largest one Malcolm had owned). Dark against his right hip, it resembles a question mark. As a child, he had fixated, transformed that fixation into something he could live with when everything else hurt.

But Oswald already knows that. Knows and has felt how each of those scars got there.

“Good Morning.”

“Good morning,” Oswald echoes (though he looks skeptical).

How long since they had drifted? Ed‘s memories of Arkham are conflated with his drift partner‘s and his own sense of passing time is irrevocably altered. He knows, looking in the mirror of his partner‘s gaze, they both have burst blood vessels in their left eye, creating a halo of red around their irises. There are healing burns on the parts of his head where the contact points of the headpiece lay. The skin on the back of Ed‘s head feels bruised, almost raw (shorts in the wires, no contact gel). But the pain is diminished and continues to shrink in the wake of the connection that followed.

He feels drowsy, blissful rather than lethargic. His chest is tight even as his body is big enough for two beating hearts. Oswald smells like smoke from the fire, salt from Ed‘s sweat and semen, his own. His leg and head both ache, and he seems startled by the burst blood vessels in his eye.

“Aspirin‘s on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet."

“You read my mind,” Oswald whispers, eyes red-rimmed and glassy.

Ed smiles. “It was easy.”

“I was thinking I would wash up,” he says, looking up from the mirror. Almost unsure as though some of Ed’s own timidity has carried over. But Ed knows his heart and he has seen that insecurity that runs so deep.

“The water‘s still warm,“ he says, sitting back against the edge.

He drains and refills it while Oswald strips out of the dressing gown. The flesh of his right leg is livid and scarred, radiates with the pain of months without corrective wear or proper exercise. Ed feels the pain, then the astonishment as he scoops his friend into a brief lift, carrying him the three steps toward the waiting bath. 

They’re both small enough for the oversized tub. Ed finds a washcloth, scrubs alabaster skin lightly with his fingers. Delighting in how natural it feels. His fingers move on quickly, replaced by his lips. Touching is still necessary. Being able to hear the both of them breathing, slightly off rhythm. That was enough to convince him of their immediate environment.

”Please,“ Oswald says and it echoes through both of them.

Ed wraps his hand around his partner‘s erection, feeling his own pressing against a sharp spine, then hip, ragged as opposed to curved, but the skin just as soft. He loves it, _loves it._

_Oh my. Oh my.. **.oh...**_

It’s amazing (admirable even) just how little water they manage to spill from the tub; movements quick and of short duration. The drift is evidently very efficient, he observes. Which is mildly disturbing considering so many of the PPDC’s star pairs are siblings or parents and children…

“...I don’t think you or I should venture down that rabbit hole,” Oswald observes, pulling the plug from the drain and linking the brass chain over the faucet.

Ed smirks against a bare shoulder. “I love your body.“

The brazenness shocks even him. If anything, his drift partner looks more skeptical.

“When does that wear off?“

“When it stops being yours. Did you _want_ it to wear off?“

He shakes his head. “Should I expect it to?“

“Pardon me if this sounds obvious, but you’ve been inside my head.“ 

But, also, when had Oswald been able to trust everything he saw? With very few people and Ed knows it now as well as he does.

“I can be positive or negative, mental and elemental—“

“Attraction,” Oswald interrupts, voice dry. “How did I...?“

“It’s a part of you now, too!” Ed grins, cackling at the frozen panic in his partner’s gaze. 

_It’s us. It’s ours. We brought it into the drift with us._

“For how long?" he asks, standing awkwardly to dry off. "Not that -- what Strange did to us. Should it last this long?“

Ed shrugs, reaching for a dark terrycloth towel. “Drift technology connects the limbic systems so the two pilots can act as one…“

He feels a spate of warmth at the memory of the Mark I‘s, particularly Cherno Alpha. The closest Eastern Europe would ever come to a “star” jaeger team. His mother‘s pride at seeing her neighbors represented in the fight, if not her home country... A tin of biscuits on the kitchen table (a portrait of the Kaidonovskys with a banner in Cyrllic)... 

Oswald’s mother. Not his mother.

“We haven’t been apart since it happened,” he finishes. “I think physical separation is supposed to lessen some of the mirrored behaviors.”

The pilots always discuss the aftermath in terms of battle: the kaiju dies, the rangers are returned to base where they are then unhooked from the apparatus. The drift ends. Where and how is never clear. The memories, and the overlap, are said to remain. Which means Oswald has memories of Ed’s own mother swimming around in his head now, at the piano, at her sketchpad, at the bottom of the stairs.

“So, what do we do now?“

”Presumably they’ll be watching my old apartment. We can’t go there. Fish is still out there and this is technically her safe haven. We probably shouldn’t linger here for much longer than a day or two...“

The relief that washes through him is from Oswald and his own soon follows, setting up a feedback loop that has them both collapsing against each other, arms overlapping. Ed tugs at his bedmate‘s dressing gown, gasping lightly as his fingers find warm alabaster skin.

“I want to see my mother.”

“Okay.”

“We should eat something beforehand…“

"Of course.”

“I'm going to need another bath… And some more _sleep_. God, it feels like I haven’t slept in ten years…”

Ed had bathed him before removing the bullet from his shoulder. A complicated process made less simpler by the pliance of his subject… Oswald knew that now, too. His touch is reverent rather than clinical. He squeezes and pushes at sore muscles. Glides his fingers along the curve of Oswald‘s spine as he moves to lie face down in the crumpled bed sheets.

_I should be insulted._

**At?**

_The inference that I’m fickle. Or not highly selective._

**That wasn’t about you. Forgive me, my sweet friend. I just didn’t know…**

_I didn’t either. Turn over and all will be forgiven._

Oswald rolls onto his back with effort, a hand delicately cupping (and covering) his prick. Ed slides down the mattress carefully. Lays soft kisses on his partner‘s wrist, knuckles, fingertips. His tongue slips between two pale fingers, moaning at the salt that hits his tongue.

_Don’t hide from me_ … **I can’t** … _**I need you, need to feel please**_ _**please…**_

The fingers move from Ed’s mouth to his hair, pulling and scratching as he moves his lips down then up, careful to tongue the frenulum just before me comes back down, his mouth _so full._..

The scene hits in two quick waves: _He’s drowning_. _**They’re drowning, screaming as the dopamine dump activates fight or flight, pain receptors overloaded, sending urgent signals outward to trembling fingers and spasming limbs...**_

The Crane Formula. Immersion therapy, sensory deprivation, not unlike so many things specialists tried with little Eddie Nashton before he was old enough to run away and change his name. Strange is more mundane as a physician than he probably likes to believe. This memory -- and the habitual grooves it formed in his brain over a period of years -- is easily managed. And so Ed redirects the scene, grounding them both in the present. He pulls back slightly, licking his lips. He tugs his partner on to his side, sliding his hips up to meet him on the pillow.

Never mind their neural connection, a single chest with two heaving hearts. This synchronicity, given their collective inexperience, is _inspired._

Ed locks his knees against the headboard and resumes sucking, breathing in myrrh soap, clean water, and fresh sweat as he slings an arm around his partner’s waist. His stomach lurching as Oswald laps at his own weeping prick, fingers closed around the base, sucking harder… Ed knows he’s won, _they’ve wo_ n, he found the right answer and the bliss of that alone nearly tips him over the edge.

After, he trails his lips and tongue back up Oswald’s body en route back to his pillow. Unwilling to relinquish his drift partner‘s touch, relieved as his arm quickly encircles his shoulders cradling him against a narrow chest, lips against his neck, ear, brow.

“Strange’s treatments always wore off,” Ed says, absorbing the full meaning of Oswald’s earlier apprehension. A year in Arkham, virtually all of it spent in isolation, in and out of harrowing experimental therapies subject to the doctor’s whim… it makes sense.

“I was wrong,” Oswald murmurs. “They did wear off, but it wasn’t just me. Even in solitary, it was never just me. Strange undermined every memory of my mother. But I still had you and what you did for me, so I could always fight.”

_Jaeger pilots share the neural load._

The laugh that creeps up his throat has a hysterical edge even as he wants to scream with joy into his pillow. Like Oswald’s too-wide smile at Jim Gordon, the resemblance is uncanny. 

“I told you -- we brought it with us,” he says into the curve of his neck. “I cannot be seen or felt, but I'm there from the onset, I look vast and broken, our connection whole and unspoken, in the end--"

“ _Szeretlek_ ,” Oswald interjects quietly, voice rustling through Ed’s damp curls.

**Fate.**

**My dear Edward, great minds do think alike. **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Ghost-drift” as described by the first draft of the Pacific Rim script: “a kind of quasi-telepathic vision shared (by parties with a pre-existing Pons connection) without the aid of a hard neural interface; commonly triggered by stress, physical proximity, or coinciding REM sleep patterns.” Strange’s jerry-rigged neural apparatus, plus Ed and Oswald’s refusal to be separated no doubt made this episode much longer and much more intense.
> 
> A thousand thanks to everyone for following this story! Thank you to Basilintime, connerluthorkent and Esperata for talking me through the early drafts. I hope the finished product is everything you wanted. 💙💚💜

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://arcanemoody.tumblr.com/).


End file.
